


The Retreat

by vR (RyuuBloke)



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 12:50:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19296097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyuuBloke/pseuds/vR
Summary: David Langley needs a way to relieve himself of troubling emotions. See the tags to see where it leads him.Sci-fi horror.The concept here is so ripped off Jennifer Haley's play "The Nether" she could definitely sue the fuck out of me.





	The Retreat

The first thing David noticed was the smell. He'd seen forests before, but he'd never been able to _smell_ them. It was nearly strong enough to buckle his knees. What was giving off such an aroma? Was it the ground or the grass? The mildly wet leaves? Does tree bark have a smell? Maybe it was the very light coming through the cracks in the leaf ceiling that gave him such pleasure?

He crouched and touched the grass. He could feel every ridge carefully sculpted into the blades. He could rip off a piece, grind it in his hand. He stopped himself from eating it - he likely wasn't alone, after all - but he was nearly certain he could've tasted it too.

The textures of every object were mesmerizing, as were the sounds. David was surrounded by ambient noises in every direction - rustling leaves, singing birds. Though less impressive than the smells and textures, they still excelled far above previous aural experiences in his life.

He stayed in a crouch for a while, just touching the ground and the life growing out of it. Eventually, he grew used enough to the beauty of this place to regain control over himself.

He looked around. He was standing on a dirt road, slightly lower than the surrounding undergrowth, as if the road were often traversed. It led to a clearing. A wall of red brick was visible from behind the trees. He headed towards it.

As David left the forest wall behind, the assault on his senses doubled. He now found himself in a lush garden surrounding a faithful recreation of a historical manor, to which the road led. Meticulously maintained colorful patches of flowers were neatly separated with trimmed hedge. It reminded him of historical French gardens, but not without some key differences. The hedge barely reached halfway up his calf where he was standing, but further away, the walls gradually increased in height. Likewise, the plants peeking above the hedge became taller. This gave the entire garden a slope, and with it a sense of wildness or danger.

Because of the manor, he couldn't see how high the walls get. They curved around the building, forming a disc. Only one plant was tall enough to be visible from the other side - a massive beanstalk, with some kind of structure built on its tip. It appeared to compliment another element of the garden - a large statue of a pink tulip, located squarely in the middle of the road, right in front of David. Examining it closer, it appeared to be made of pastillage, but David once again refrained from tasting it.

The manor itself was simple compared to the garden. A block of red brick, somewhat wider than it was tall, decorated with neat rows of windows. Their white frames contrasted nicely with the red bricks. A mansard roof hanged above them, and on its top was a metal fence protecting a roof terrace. On the lower edge of the roof, there were dormers, suggesting an attic.

A singular door allowed entrance to the building. David approached it, traversing the full radius of the circular garden. It came with a knocker, which David used, savoring the novelty of such an antiquated tool. Waiting for someone to answer, he rubbed the door itself, still fascinated with the area's level of detail.

The door was eventually opened by an older bearded man. A soft ruff covered his neck. In general, his outfit reminded David of the men in Frans Hals portraits. He would fit perfectly in a period drama, if not for the color of his clothes - white, like his beard and the thinning hair that still held on to his aged face.

"Welcome to the Retreat, David Langley," he said in an aspirated voice. "Should I call you David?"

David still wasn't fully used to the beauty of this place, but he tried to maintain a noble posture in accordance with the rules.

"Certainly. How should I call you?" he asked.

"Simply 'Father' shall suffice. Come in, please. A guest shouldn't be kept waiting on the doorstep."

The man who called himself Father opened the door fully. The moment David stepped inside, he heard little feet scurrying down the stairs right in front of him.

"Is the new guest here, Father?" an excited high-pitched voice called out.

The voice was followed by a small boy. Milk-colored arms grew out of a red sleeveless sweater. Short platinum blonde hair almost blended with his skin, leaving his large black eyes as the only contrasting element of his face. Looking him over, David concluded he couldn't be more than six years old.

Besides the jittery little imp walked a taller boy in an elegant brown blazer covering a white shirt. Though he was as pale as the other boy, his face was covered in freckles which matched his red hair. He was a well-poised young man on the edge of puberty, the beginning of a stubble visible on his cheeks.

"Good afternoon, sir," said the older boy.

"These are two of my boys. Simon," Father pointed to the younger boy, "and Frederik. Boys, this is Mr. Langley."

"Would you play with us, Mr. Langley?" Frederik's face betrayed some excitement, but Simon was downright shaking with anticipation. He seemed to be holding his breath, awaiting David's response.

"Now, boys, give the man some time! He's only just arrived." Father looked towards David apologetically.

"I'd love to play with you in a while," said David.

Frederik nodded and pulled Simon's shoulder slightly. The boy resisted for a moment, but Frederik quickly convinced him to leave with him."

Once the boys were gone, Father turned to David.

"I know a man of good breeding when I see one. You look exquisite today, David."

"It's thanks to you."

"Would you like to see the rest of the house?"

"With pleasure, Father."

Father gestured towards a door, leading David into another corridor.

The inside of the house was much more decorated than the exterior. The floors were made of glistening golden wood, usually partially covered by a red, brown or yellow carpet. The walls were painted in similar warm colors, regularly interrupted with wooden pilasters from which protruded decorative candelabras. There was the occasional painting, sometimes framed, sometimes covering an entire wall - some of which David recognized as the work of Botticelli or Da Vinci. 

It all fit together so perfectly. The forest, the garden, the manor - its exterior and interior. It came together to form a beautiful idyllic landscape. And it felt so realistic.

However, as Father toured David around the manor, a strange flaw surfaced. There were more rooms in the manor than one would expect, and their arrangement didn't feel organic. The first floor housed a ballroom, an indoor pool (itself a strange addition to a house mimicking a historical manor), several baths and saunas and a library, right next to each other. There was also a kitchen, a dining room and a lounge with a billiard table, among others. All accessible from the same, lengthy hallway that encircled the whole floor.

On the second floor, one would find the children's bedrooms and other rooms dedicated to them. They had their own library, for example, and an entire room dedicated to storing their building block creations.

It was on the second floor that David encountered another guest, who quickly greeted him from the end of a hallway and disappeared behind a door - which, according to Father, belonged to one of the children. Each child's bedroom was located at the end of a hallway, their door being the only one in the hallway. The rooms were also far away from one another, placed unnaturally, as if intentionally built as far apart as possible. David counted six of them in total.

Father concluded the tour by showing David the attic, which contained many indistinct closed boxes and chests, and the roof terrace, from which the entire garden was visible, including the impressively tall beanstalk (the structure at its peak revealed to be a simple treehouse) and a large lake that cut into the forest wall.

As the two men were returning from the terrace, they encountered five children. They stood in silence, arranged in a line, completely preventing passage. They looked as if they'd been waiting for them.

Besides Simon and Frederik, there were two girls and another boy. Both girls were dark-haired and wore dresses, but while one was well-groomed, elegant and confident, the other, a pair of glasses almost slipping off her nose, seemed shy and bookish. In fact, she was holding a thick volume, clutching it to her chest with both arms. She seemed to be around eleven years old. The other girl, while her elegance would better fit an older girl, looked younger, definitely younger than ten. Another contrasting feature was the girls' skin tones: the young elegant girl had a dark complexion, while the other had white skin with pink undertones that gave her a permanent blush. The boy was a chubby, curly-haired angel straight out of a Renaissance painting, if perhaps aged up some. He looked a few years older than Simon, but not nearly as mature as Frederik.

"Ah, you children have such a great sense of timing. I was just finishing showing Mr. Langley the house. Would you like to play with them, sir?"

David suspected the children's well-timed appearance was far from coincidental.

"I'm a tad tired, Father. I simply wanted to see this Retreat of yours for myself today. I've heard great things about it, and just had to see if the rumors were true." David smiled towards the children. "I'd love to play with you guys another day."

"It's quite alright, Mr. Langley," said Frederik. "So long as you come back soon."

"Yeah!" squeaked little Samuel.

"Will you promise to return, sir?" said the elegant girl.

"Of course. I'd be delighted to get to know you all."

Father put his hands on his hips, exhaling loudly. "Alright, then! If you children would allow me a few more minutes with Mr. Langley. I'll be ready to tuck you all in very soon."

Tuck them in? David looked out a nearby window. The sun was setting. He was certain it couldn't have been later than four in the evening when they were up on the roof terrace.

Father led David to a ground level terrace. Large, but empty, it overlooked the beanstalk's side of the garden, where the hedge walls reached up to two times David's height. A few round tables peppered the tiles. Father invited him to sit at one where two glasses of whiskey had been conveniently placed.

"This place is amazing," said David, taking a sip of the whiskey. "Even this - it's so real... almost hyperreal. How do you have enough... space to store all of this? I could feel every detail on individual blades of grass!"

Father laughed. "Well, most the fine details aren't actually stored anywhere. The textures of objects, the things you won't notice without getting  _really_ close - that's generated on the fly, and is only temporary. Touch a wall, go to the other side of the room and back, touch it again, and it's surface will have completely changed. It's generated for your benefit only when you're paying attention to it."

"I've never seen anything like it."

"Most developers don't care about true verisimilitude, or they're afraid of the challenge of trying to achieve it. They're content with simply maintaining suspension of disbelief. Their sims satisfy fantasies, but only function as a side dish to reality. I wish to provide a substitute."

"This kind of realism is unheard of in other sims. Did you program it all yourself?"

"Of course." David had follow-up questions, but Father continued before he could ask them. "Before you ask: Yes, it was a lot of work. No, I'm not interested in giving the technology away."

"Why? I mean, this place is amazing, but one man can only create so much. If more people had access to this, it would revolutionize virtual reality!"

"It would indeed. It would change the industry - make VR nearly indistinguishable from real life. It would fundamentally change how people think about it."

David realized what Father meant.

"And probably make ghosting a much worse problem... But if you think it's so dangerous, why would  _you_ do it?"

Father's empty glass made a sharp noise as he put it down on the glass table. His soft smile disappeared.

"The Retreat was built for those who would be better off as ghosts."

A moment of silence passed before Father continued.

"You weren't interested in playing with the kids today."

David hesitated to answer.

"Um, no, I suppose not. I really am tired from work."

"Do you work with kids in reality?" 

"I do."

"You'll find my children are a bit different from the ones you know. Have you noticed how mature little Emma looks? Not very much like six-year-olds in real life, is she?"

David assumed Emma must be the poised girl's name. She did appear very mature for her age.

"I appreciate your compliments, David, but the Retreat isn't an art piece to be observed. I provide a very specific service here. I can't afford the best servers. We can't serve very many guests at once. I can't let people come here just to do some window shopping."

"I understand," said David, though he wasn't sure if he did. Father's tone made it very clear, however, that he was not welcome here unless he wanted to make use of his "service". "I think I'll go now, if that's okay with you."

"Of course," Father's smiling face and aspirated voice returned. "If you ever want a taste of paradise again, remember, the Retreat welcomes  _all_ with open arms - especially undesirables."

David logged off. He saw the empty glasses vanish from the table and Father beginning to stand up as his vision faded, first to white, and then to black. 

The simpod depressurized with a hiss. David pushed the lid open. Floating in simpod gel, he looked up at the ceiling of his apartment, and the flat stock picture of a forest roof printed upon it. 

 


End file.
